FOI Fest: Andreas Pavlou, OGP Independent Reporting Mechanism
In this five-minute lightning talk, Andreas Pavlou, Lead at Open Government Partnership Independent Reporting Mechanism, shares positive advances in Access to Information in countries such as the Netherlands and Brazil.
FOI Fest 2026 was held on 19th February and was co-organised by the FOI Network.
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Transcript
0:00 Gavin Freeguard: Welcome to FOI Fest 2026!
0:04 Andreas Pavlou: Afternoon everyone. My name is Andreas Pavlou. I’m lead at the independent reporting mechanism of the Open Government Partnership, which is an international initiative that seeks to bring government and civil society reformers together to co-create commitments that seek to advance transparency, participation and accountability in government.
0:24 Since 2011 we’ve had, or we’ve seen, over 350, commitments made across the partnership, including, I think, in the UK, as well: commitments on advancing access to information, Freedom of Information, either legal reforms, reforms to improve implementation modernised systems that currently exist.
0:42 And whilst that may be a nice number to throw at you all, it does actually give us a really interesting dataset to look at of examples where we’ve seen successful reforms, the impacts that they’ve had and some of the factors that have fed into those successful reforms as well.
0:58 So in somewhere like Brazil, imagine, they adopted their law around 2011 and since then, they’ve been using the OGP platform to reform the implementation of their law.
1:08 They’ve used that to implement a similar platform to WhatdoTheyKnow at the local level, which has been super important to ensure that journalists and environmental activists in particular can make anonymous requests, which is a huge security issue there.
1:25 They’ve also used the platform to ensure compliance at the local level. And whilst that might sound really good nowadays, we obviously live in a world of huge technological disruption, political disruption, sometimes these norms and expectations feel broken or are breaking or very strained.
1:43 And so what I want to do is share with you three examples from across the world that are happening right now in Freedom of Information, and which might help to inspire you all here.
1:53 So the first example comes from Moldova. Bear with me. It was relevant to an extent. They recently adopted a new reformed Access to Information law. Their law is also 20 plus years old as well, and what they have done is use their this new law to strengthen the sanctions and enforcement procedures that they can use; streamlines the procedures for making requests for judicial review.
2:24 They’ve also made sure that they’ve reduced access fees and other measures to improve the law and modernise the law, which not only has helped them to begin their process of adopting or process of EU accession goals, but also has been a huge political signal from them to demonstrate that they’re seeing these disruptions happening around the world, and that they’re putting themselves forward towards being a modern democracy and all the values and human rights that go with that, including the fundamental access to information.
2:59 In the Netherlands, they have a fairly strong FOI regime there, the WOB, as they call it, and what they have done is use OGP platform to improve implementation. So they’ve got a multi year modernisation strategy where they’re seeking to use digital and technological advances to improve their IT systems their archiving of information as well, digitising all of that and working to improve proactive disclosure of information as well, so that again, whilst they have a strong legal regime, they’re really working to make sure that technology can help them improve implementation of that law
3:48 My final example comes, however, from Australia, as we’ve mentioned earlier, and with some debates that might seem quite familiar to you: the Government have put forward changes to the law which would potentially restrict or make it easier to reject vexatious requests, to require ID for requesters, potentially expanding exceptions which obviously have raised a number of concerns from civil society.
4:22 And so what we’re seeing from these different examples are both, in some places, modernisation, strengthening of legal frameworks in other places, push back to some of the challenges that all of them face, whether it be and here as well, whether it be the larger number of requests that people are receiving, whether it be challenges from technology and artificial intelligence, or whether it be resource constraints that exist as well.
4:48 So what comes next? What is the challenge that we can maybe look towards fixing? And I just want to point you all towards the importance of collaboration. I guess I don’t have any solutions, unfortunately for you, but I think collaboration is really important internationally.
5:08 It’s important in OGP, we have a proactive disclosure coalition working with a number of countries, the Netherlands, the OECD, that are also looking to implement international standards around practice disclosure and there are consultation opportunities later this year, which I encourage you all to take part in.
5:27 But domestically, collaboration is also really important to see how we can think about how these disruptions can be utilised to actually improve implementation and potentially strengthen our legal structures for access to information. Thank you.
5:44 Myf Nixon: Hello to our most completist listeners. If you’re still listening, thank you so much for sticking with this right to the end. I’m Myf from mySociety, and it’s my job to put these podcasts together.
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